


Art History Makers

by katsukiyaoi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, College, Crushes, Fluff, M/M, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Sorry Not Sorry, viktor is a creep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 23:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsukiyaoi/pseuds/katsukiyaoi
Summary: inspired by: https://katsudon-vitya.tumblr.com/post/160000680438/college-au-viktor-is-harboring-two-hopelesscollege au: viktor is harboring two hopeless crushes. one on the cute boy with the glasses in his art history class, and the other on the sexy mysterious figure who skates alone on the local outdoor rink at night.title is probably temp





	Art History Makers

There are three reasons why Viktor enrolls in Art History 101, Section 4. 

1\. It fulfills both the visual/performing arts and history core curriculum requirements.

2\. He is mildly interested in arts and aesthetics.

3\. The class only meets in the afternoons, as do all of his other classes. 

On the first day of classes, Professor Baranovskaya hands out an intimidating syllabus while leveling a cold glare over her students.

“This will not be an easy class. It will be work, and you will learn and grow from it,” she intones firmly. Viktor purses his lips minutely at the mention of work. “I will not waste time reading this packet out loud to you. You are expected to read it at home, sign the attached form, and bring that to our next class.”

The professor switches the slide from a stark title screen to a seating chart. “These will be your assigned seats. At the beginning of class, I will take attendance by assessing if you are in your assigned seat with all of your class materials ready – meaning homework on the top of your desk if any is assigned. You can get up and move to your seats now.” 

Shuffling ensues. Viktor tunes out after settling into his assigned seat, located between a petite blond whose hair largely obscures his face and a guy with an undercut smirking cockily at the syllabus packet. He figures he won’t need to know anything if he simply drops the course. 

Viktor scans through the roster of available classes when he returns to his apartment. The only sections left all begin before 10:00 AM. He heaves a sigh and begins to scan the Art History syllabus packet, and to feel productive, inputs the assignment due dates into his Google Calendar. 

****************

The first week passes relatively painlessly. Viktor takes his time in the mornings, stretching, checking his phone, and eating somewhat-balanced breakfasts of cereal and fruit. He takes Makkachin on a walk and tries to do some of his work before his classes start. 

As for classes, he generally slogs through them, uncaring. He knows the business courses aren’t too difficult, knows he probably won’t fail. Art History is somewhat interesting for the first few weeks as they discuss modern art to get a feel for the new terminology that they’ll need for the rest of the year.  
The guy immediately to his right, JJ, is an overachiever. His hand bolts up for 90% of Professor Baranovskaya’s questions, and his answers are, as the professor puts it, “fundamentally right, but demonstrate a shallow understanding.” When she presses the rest of the class to “think, think, what could the artist mean?” it’s typically followed by a silence, eventually broken by one of the two Yu(u)ri’s. 

Yuri P. sits immediately to Viktor’s left and wears a permanent scowl and a rotating collection of cat prints. He’s sharp, perceptive, but also scathing – critiquing the artists as he analyzes their work. Yuuri K. sits on the other side of JJ, next to the wall and directly behind a Thai boy who Viktor can hear Yuuri trading whispers with. Viktor can never really see Yuuri around JJ’s looming figure, but his voice is soft and slightly accented, and he speaks in measured tones with careful precision. His words never fail to make Professor Baranovskaya’s lips quirk in a satisfied smile. 

Viktor, meanwhile, tries to keep his head bowed and hand busy with note-taking, knowing that if he stops for too long he’ll lose focus and get lost. 

Not that he’s successful in keeping up – he is, indeed, very much lost. 

****************

“I hate this class,” Viktor bites.

“Which one?” Chris replies innocuously, scrolling through his Instagram feed. 

“The fucking... The fucking Art History one, Chris, what else?” 

“You hate all of your classes,” Chris reminds him patiently.

“I hate this one the most.”

****************

On the third week of class, Viktor arrives early and drains his coffee slowly as he watches the other students filter in. Yuuri K. comes about five minutes before class. It’s Viktor’s first good look at Yuuri without the bulk of JJ in between them. He’s wearing sweatpants and a navy-blue hoodie with the Japanese Students’ Association logo and a series of cute Asian-style emojis. His hair is mostly tame except for a tuft near the back that sticks up. Viktor wonders if it would be weird if he got up to pat it down. 

Yuuri looks how he sounds: soft, modest. A million additional adjectives clamor to make themselves heard in Viktor’s mind: sweet, pure, untouchable, innocent, huggable. Yuuri extracts a light blue notebook polka-dotted with brown poodles. 

Viktor’s brain races to come up with a good opening line. He oscillates between You should meet my poodle, Makkachin and hey did you know your hair is kinda sticking up in the back. He also realizes both statements are a bit rude – the first one too demanding, the second generally impolite. Then Yuuri looks up from his notebook and locks eyes with him. 

Yuuri’s eyes are also soft, even behind his very cute glasses.

“You should know that your hair is kinda stuck-up,” Viktor blurts.

On his left, Yuri snorts. On his right, Yuuri pinks. “Umm… excuse me?”

“I meant that. Uh. I just wanted to tell you that the back of your hair is stuck-up. Um, it’s sticking up. It’s…” Viktor attempts to mimic the appearance of Yuuri’s hair with a hand, but it probably looks like some shitty charades interpretation of a turkey. 

“Aha, it just does that sometimes. I can’t get it to stay down.” 

Viktor immediately thinks of something of his own that he can’t get to stay down. 

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Viktor says reassuringly. “Um. But that’s why I was looking at you.” Fuck. He just admitted that he had been staring. Yuri is snickering. It’s the most somewhat-positive emotion that Viktor has seen from him all semester. 

JJ bursts into the room and throws himself into his seat. “My, everyone’s chatty today! Didja all miss me?”

“We were talking about how much we hate you,” Yuri says easily, not looking up from his (tiger-ear-adorned) phone. 

“Yuri, you wound me,” JJ blusters, dramatically throwing a hand over his heart. He’s clearly reveling the attention, negative or not. 

Viktor digs into his bag and retrieves a little tin of emergency hair gel. He gets out of his seat and awkwardly leans over JJ to offer the tin to Yuuri. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says hesitantly, worried that he’s somehow butchering the Japanese boy’s name. Viktor bites his own lip at the lack of response. “Yuuri,” a little louder now, and he feels a bit like he’s on fire, sure that the whole class is staring. Yuuri doesn’t look up from copying today’s agenda into his notebook. Fuck. Does he give up? 

“Yuuri,” JJ says sharply. Yuuri turns at last. “That’s how it’s done,” JJ boasts, smirking. It’s such a stupid thing to boast about.

Viktor focuses on Yuuri’s too-soft eyes. “I, um, hair gel. You can have some. Uh. For your hair,” he finishes lamely. 

“Thank you,” Yuuri says hesitantly, taking the tin from Viktor’s outstretched hand. “I’ll give this back to you next class?”

“Sure, or whenever, don’t think anything of it, it’s fine,” Viktor mumbles in one breath. He reseats himself as Professor Baranovskaya begins to call for everyone’s attention. 

Viktor marvels that it’s only been five minutes since he’s actually, really looked at Yuuri, and he already wants to know his full last name so that he can practice writing it in cursive. 

****************

“I’ve found something that makes my Art History class tolerable,” Viktor announces, a bit cryptically, over a microwave dinner with Chris. 

“Is it a guy,” Chris asks immediately. 

“Fuck, I can never surprise you.”

“I’ve known you for like ten years, Nikiforov.” 

“Well? Aren’t you going to ask about him?”

“Even if I didn’t, you’re about to tell me anyway,” Chris reasons, refusing to act as an excited gossiper for Viktor’s benefit. Viktor knows Chris is doing this only to rile him up, because Chris loves gossip. 

“His name is Yuuri—“ Viktor begins, eyes already sparkling –

“The edgy blond kid? Didn’t know he was your type,” Chris chuckles.

“No, no, another boy named Yuuri. He’s Japanese, looks really soft and cuddly, and he has glasses with blue frames.”

“Sounds captivating,” Chris drawls, spooning mac and cheese into his mouth. 

“You’ll just have to meet him for yourself sometime. When I bring him back here, of course. And I’ve got dibs, ok, I found him. My words just can’t do him justice. When he talks in class, the professor actually approves of what he says, and I don’t really get art or art history but apparently he does. I don’t know, he just seems really thoughtful and deep, and he blushed when I said that his hair was stuck up.”

“You’re not really making sense.”

“He’s adorable and I love him,” Viktor declares. 

“Wait, so you… you told him his hair was ‘stuck-up’?” Chris repeats, the last part of Viktor’s ramble finally sinking in. 

“Well, I meant to say that it was sticking up, and English verbs are hard, especially around cute boys.”

“Fair enough,” concedes Chris, “but you do realize that that’s an awful thing to say to your crush, right, that their hair is stuck up.”

“I wasn’t – I didn’t mean to – You’re awful. I mean, I already feel bad about it. And I gave him some of my hair gel so he could fix it.”

“You’re really something else, Viktor.”

“I can’t believe I missed him the first few weeks. I’m actually looking forward to class now. This feels amazing.”

“I’m really not sure if this is a good thing, Vitya. You’ll probably be less mopey about attending class, but I also have a feeling your attention will be shot.” 

“In that case, I could probably ask him for a private tutoring session,” Viktor speculates dreamily. He dumps his plate into the sink and treks to his laptop to begin an extensive search of Yuuris in Detroit. 

At 3AM, Viktor has composed a message containing the most nonchalantly-toned inquiry of Yuuri’s last name he can think of to Yuri, and is hovering over the “send” button before Chris slaps him over the head with a newspaper of skimpily-clad men and tells him to not make any decisions that he’ll regret. 

“You have a reputation to uphold as my best friend,” Chris reminds him. 

Viktor whines. 

****************

Viktor wakes up late the next day and brings Makkachin outside for five minutes instead of taking her on a full walk. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” Viktor mumbles as he checks the bus schedules and tries to calculate which one he can make. 

In the evening, he brings Makkachin to the nearby park and meanders around a few paths until he ends up at the outdoor ice rink, which seems somewhat out of place: too ethereal or majestic to belong. A single figure makes lazy loops around the rink. Such a sight should seem cold or lonely, but the man exudes a quiet confidence, as if this is his rink and his alone. His skin is fair, his hair and clothing dark.

Viktor makes a lap around the rink, somewhat curious, and watches as the man concludes his warmup and begins a dance. There’s no music, but Viktor feels captivated. He’s not completely unfamiliar with figure skating – the Winter Olympics are big in Russia, after all. Something feels different, more intimate. A few couples linger in the park, oblivious to the spectacle in the ice rink. This performance is shared between Viktor, the skater, and no one else. He likes that idea, even if the skater doesn’t know he’s there. 

More than the jumps, Viktor is impressed with the man’s flexibility and balance, the way he glides as if he were born with blades on his feet. He seems to command the ice entirely. 

When Viktor finishes his lap, he ties Makkachin’s leash to a streetlamp and slowly creeps closer, squirming through a line of waist-high bushes that separate the sidewalk from the chain-link fence surrounding the rink. He squats carefully, trying to be inconspicuous, feeling exposed with his bright silver hair. He curses himself for not bringing a hooded jacket. Fortunately for him, the skater’s eyes appear closed, as if he is lost in his own art. 

Art… This is art that Viktor can really appreciate, more than the Baroque paintings that suck life out of his soul the more he tries to understand them. 

Art in the smooth line of his neck, the fluid movements of his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel kinda bad, like i'm stealing someone's idea, but they posted it anonymously on the internet... so like... and i'm bad with finding inspiration 
> 
> if this is somehow bad of me lmk and i'll take it down. i really wanted to write this after seeing it though lol 
> 
> i'm also really sorry for the title but i'm also kinda laughing why do i do this to myself 
> 
> also this is not done but i don't know how to make it say 1/?
> 
> my very barren tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/catchsukiyuuri


End file.
